Nokia: Big screen phones are stupid

Niklas Savander, executive vice-president at Nokia, covering Brand, Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, Customer Care and Information Technology, says there will come a time when consumers realise that having a phone with a really large screen is just stupid.

"There is a monster truck syndrome coming soon in my opinion, that at some point in time people will just say 'this is stupid'," Savander tells Pocket-lint in a one-to-one briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, after the announcement that the Nokia Lumia 900 is coming to Europe. "It is hard to say when that will happen, but advances should be about what new technologies can we create, not just about making screens bigger."

The comments, clearly having a dig at the latest offerings from Samsung and LG, suggest that Nokia believes there is a very different approach to wooing customers.

The Nokia Lumia 900 hasn't followed screen size trends in the US. It sports a relavitely small 4.3-inch screen compared to many of the 4.6, 4.7, 5- and even 5.3-inch screens on devices from Samsung and others.

Savander candidly suggests that, looking at the Lumia 900, one could argue that it needs a bigger display to compete with other big-screen handsets on the market, but he feels it doesn't need it.

"It then becomes a tablet and then we can have a tablet discussion," he adds.

Recently Pocket-lint put together a chart of the latest phones to see how they fared against each other in the size stakes and the Nokia Lumia 800 - little brother of the Lumia 900 - was one of the smaller handsets. It sports a 3.7-inch screen. It is also a view that seems to be held by Apple. The company's iPhone 4S has an even smaller phone, with a 3.5-inch screen.

The Nokia Lumia 900 is expected to be available in UK sometime between April and June.